Peter O. Ibikunle*, Orovwigho A, Oguaghamba CI, Awhen P
Weight-gain in psychiatric population is a common clinical challenge. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of selected psychotropic drugs on the cardio-respiratory fitness and body composition of patients with serious mental illness (SMI).Forty four subjects (22 SMI and 22 apparently healthy subjects as control) participated in this quasi-experimental study, which were selected using purposive and consecutive sampling respectively. The VO2max was estimated from HR recovery (HRrec) after 15 seconds using the equation VO2max=111.33-0.42H for males and 65.81-0.1847H for females. Comparative analysis of the data was done using descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation, the inferential statistics of independent t-test with alpha level of significance of 0.05. Significant differences were recorded between the VO2max of SMI as 53.72ml/kg/min and apparently healthy subjects as 64.44ml/kg/min. The sum of skin fold thick was seen to be 46.41+32.87mm for SMIs and 28.50+9.49mm for apparently healthy subjects. Patients with severe mental disorder had significantly lower VO2max and higher body composition than the apparently healthy psychotropic naïve subjects. Thus, it is critical that clinicians take precautions to monitor and control weight-gain.